3 New Ways to Attract More Twitter Followers from WordPress.com

May 31, 2011

Nick Momrik

We love to create new features on WordPress.com, but we also like to make it easier for you to connect your site with other popular services. We’ve teamed up with the folks at Twitter several times over the years, and we’re thrilled to help them unveil the new Follow Button to the world for the very first time today.

The new Follow Button makes it easy for your readers to follow you on Twitter without ever leaving your WordPress.com site. Here are three ways to incorporate it on your site:

1. Add the new Follow Button to posts, pages, or text widgets. You can even show a count of your followers, customize the colors, and display a link to your Twitter page. Check out the Twitter Follow Button support document for all the details.

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You might think about adding the same feature to comments beneath our posts. For example, I write articles (or posts) periodically, and then update them with continuing comments, as well as the comments of others. I would like the comments to be “tweeted” too, but this is not possible now.

I love the minimal look of the Twitter Follow Button that I used it on a Text Widget on my sidebar. For aesthetic purposes, I’m trying to center align the button, but to no avail. Could you suggest a shortcode command for this?

Nice – I do notice that intermittently Twitter.com doesn’t respond, so when my blog comes up there is an error: “Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page.” Is that just a traffic issue, or technical glitch, or ???

AWESOME! Quick question…
When are you going to allow us to edit when you can tweet at a post from the bottom button and have it tag us in post when people share, and then have the option to follow after pressing tweet when sharing. I hope that makes sense…

I’m grateful for this widget as well and have been noticing the same error code as mentioned above. Will see if it continues to happen. . .
Looking forward to being able to use custom Twitter images at some point on WP.

WordPress: Great service, but it’s been a while since I’ve posted and I’ve noticed a shift away from actual blogging and more toward self-promotion. The stats have had quite a bit of a makeover and now there is a big push to advertise your posts. I just posted something and got the message: “Want more followers? Enable Publicize”, and then there are posts like these.

Maybe it’s because I’m not popular that I don’t understand the desire for this kind of fame, but it seems so overblown.

Cool – I don’t really like the way the widget currently renders, but the follow button I like a lot. Just a thought: it may be nice to support multi-author blogs in the widget by allowing multiple Twitter accounts to be added.

Nice work, it’s always good to visit this blog and see the new stuff you’ve cooked up. I am predicting Google’s +1 button will be next 😛

It all sounds pretty good but don’t you have to be ‘on twitter’ to take part? I haven’t a clue what to do about that. I think I am a bit long in the tooth to try and grasp anything else and keep up with it.

This is great, thanks. But how can i get the actual Twitter “follow” icon/button, instead of just text? I feel like my whole twitter widget is so much text and not enough graphic. I’ve thought that since i started using it.
Thanks so much.

It would be even nicer if we could use the official twitter app, I know its Java script and won’t run on WP, the twitter app is configurable and can match to the blog colours rather than that clunky thing. Also the FB connect doesn’t work, it won’t cross post.

This sounds nice; except I am not an active tweeter. So, there is no reason for following me. Here is what I’d like to see implemented. I’m already taking advantage of tweeting my posts via Publicize and have my site set to enable sharing via Twitter. How about automatic tweets sent to Twitter? Here is what I mean. When I click on “Publicize”, a single tweet is automatically sent to my Twitter page. Why not schedule a tweet to occur up to a max of 3 to 5 times a day and at specific time period.

My problem is, I have been tweeting my blog posts updates for quite some time. I have only 175 followers. I’ve seen very little traffic coming from Twitter and yet I get plenty from Facebook. My thought is, I’d like to increase the visibility of my blog update tweets. Hence, the request for multiple sending of tweets. Love to hear of other solutions, though.

Nice new enhanced Twitter link. Well done.
Still waiting for the link that very many of us need to Facebook. We need to update those fan pages/business pages in Facebook. Been waiting a long time…don’t you know how much us guys pay you for WordPress (oh forgot you’re free). 🙂 TY for all you do.

I’ve been trying to use the Image widget but the url disappears every time. I like the addition of the twitter follow button and I’ve got it on my site now but I’d really like to use some additional buttons and badges from other sites. Is that possible?

It was so easy – a couple of clicks and that was it, done. I like Barry Brindisi’s idea re multiple publicizing for every tweet (e.g 3 or 4 times/day)). This will hit more time zones. I know you can do it through some apps but I don’t like the way they ask for so much control on your account.

Just saw a comment about the Google +1 button. I would like to chip in a request for a WP fit for that too. I’m fairly niche with my cancer nutrition and recipe blog so I need all the help I can get. Thanks!

Where the heck is the Twitter widget? PLEASE, PLEASE make instruction clear and from STEP ONE before you post stuff like this. I could tear my hair out when a writer assumes I’m supposed to automatically know something instead of making it clear.
Smoke rising from brain now.

Hi Nick! I’ve added the new twitter widget to my blog. However, I`d really like to use twitter`s widget (http://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets/widget_profile) because it has more options for personalizing the appearance. I`ve tried it and it`s not working, the only thing showing on the blog is the source code itself. Is there anything I can do about this? Thanks!